kottke.org posts about thetelephonegambit

On May 22, 1886, The Washington Post published a shocking front-page scoop: Zenas F. Wilber, a former Washington patent examiner, swore in an affidavit that he’d been bribed by an attorney for Alexander Graham Bell to award Bell the patent for the telephone over a rival inventor, Elisha Gray, who’d filed a patent document on the same day as Bell in 1876.

Even though Bell has been legally vindicated on this issue, Seth Shulman’s new book, The Telephone Gambit, suggests that he did in fact steal a key idea from Elisha Gray. (via house next door)